GitHub threatens to shut down a repository for using the word 'retard'

How can you call the "just words" of what happened to Eich and Card a "shitstorm", but fail to see how "just words" can have a real, tangible impact on other people who don't share your particular persuasion?

Meritocracy is now a "bad word" according to feminists. The start of this change began at GitHub 2 years ago, with getting rid of a rug. The rug said,

"United Meritocracy of GitHub"

source:http://readwrite.com/2014/01/24/github-meritocracy-rug

This goes down the social justice warrior, feminism, and racism avenues, so it of course had to change.

Now, why is Meritocracy bad?

"By discarding the difficulties inherent in being both objective and humanistic, leaders in the open source community ignore the moral impact of their value system and focus solely on the potential value of their creations. The comfortable elite benefit from the status quo and never have to question the circumstances that keep them in positions of power."

The Dehumanizing Myth of the Meritocracy , by Coraline Ada Ehmke https://modelviewculture.com/pieces/the-dehumanizing-myth-of...

Should I interpret the article as content based upon its merit, or should I take the fact a white (-3 points), female (+5 points), lesbian (+2 points), computer programmer (-4 points) wrote this article? Look at the bright side, if she can claim black (+10 points), then we have to view her content even more positively.

My answer is that I should evaluate the points and content on its merit. I'm sure she would be appalled that I would want to give her "fake minority points" to falsely increase/decrease her perceived score... Then again, I may be wrong.

But this, fellow programmer, is what we are having to fight against. I may be male. I may be female. I may be transgender. I may even be a nullo(just.dont.ask.). Or White. Or black. Or Asian. Or have a disability. Or be intellectually superior. Or completely average. But what I do have is my words, and how others read and interpret the content and worth of my words. It reminds me a document I read long ago...

"We exist without skin color, without nationality, without religious bias... and you call us criminals...

...Yes, I am a criminal. My crime is that of curiosity. My crime is that of judging people by what they say and think, not what they look like. My crime is that of outsmarting you, something that you will never forgive me for."

\/\The Conscience of a Hacker/\/

We see similar dehumanising language in other genocidal actions: it's present in Nazi Germany when they describe Jewish people as subhuman - the same word has been used against people with LD. Not just by the Nazis with their T4 program[1] but also by British eugenics supporters.[2] these eugenic attitudes lost popularity after the war, but they were still easy enough to find.

And apart from these dehumanising effects the word is used to creat fear, alarm, and distress among the people it's used against. People are routinely attacked with that word.

If you think words can't hurt i) you've had a cushy life and ii) you spectacularly lack imagination and empathy.

Really: learn to English and come up with better insults.

[1] http://www.ushmm.org/outreach/en/article.php?ModuleId=100076...

[2] http://www.newstatesman.com/society/2010/12/british-eugenics...

If you say a material is fire retardant, you not only are free to say this, it would be ridiculous to have to invent or supplant a new word because one was co-opted over time and personified, turned into a noun. People will disagree, but it takes mental gymnastics to be offended by things like that.

That's why people have developed the SJW social justice warrior moniker and I think it fits well. Because it's an imaginary problem and working within that framework these kinds of people will eat themselves to death. So why engage or contribute to it at the expense of time, logic, and a reduction in cohesion of everyone else working towards goals.

You have to give people the power to use words like this where a true meaning well defined is absent of insult and if used as insult, if not specifically directed at someone, you can't allow another person's claim of offense to affect the conversation thats apart from them.

this is my biggest problem of a lot of the narrative spread by certain people and the media. maybe it's a thing with modern society where foolish people misidentify real problems and instead use their valuable time on things like microaggressions thereby taking focus (sometimes on purpose) off actual aggressions. And so far it's recipe for a failed state. Christopher Hitchens said it well. "The fact that you’re offended has absolutely no bearing on the truth of the matter"

The sad thing, the very sad thing is the media do better on these kinds of controversies because they generate views. I have chosen to participate here on this in hopes it might actually set somebody straight. The people who claim this kind of censorship are the same people who purport that there is strength in diversity. But unfortunately they don't really know what diversity really looks like in terms of diversity of ideas. They imagine it means comfort but they are wrong. Understanding diversity means bearing with discomfort and dealing with the imperfections of speech, perception and letting go of this idea that you can break down useful frameworks and infrastructure and it will make things better. That's not how one becomes a valuable participant in anything and they make communities suffer.